July, 1920 
FOREST AND STREAM 
367 
A beach table made of dnft wood 
At a salt water camp 
An ideal beach tent 
There is all the difference in the world 
between it and one of 42 lb.s., where the 
pressure of the harness straps on your 
shoulders becomes very irksome. For a 
harness, broad woven belting sewed up 
to a carrying frame, with two straps to 
buckle around the pack when rolled up, 
is a light device weighing about 1% lbs. 
The bulkiest parcel is the bedding, either 
two all-wool blankets, or a wool sleeping 
bag with a light extra blanket inside, and 
will come under seven pounds and roll up 
in a cylinder about two feet long inside 
the tent fly. Around it goes the stretcher 
bed for protection against ripping 
branches, and inside it are bestowed the 
small duffle in a sort of core. The whole 
is laid in the harness and the straps se- 
cured around it, with the axe underneath 
the straps. 
It is in the food that one has to watch 
the weight carefully. The tendency is to 
take too much of one thing and not 
enough of something more valuable. 
Potatoes and onions can be picked up 
anywhere in trout country, so only a few 
of them are needed to start on, carried 
loose in the pack. Ten pounds of food 
are plenty for a man for a week, if he 
will catch only enough trout to eat. Small 
paraffined muslin sacks, 6x4 inches, are 
amply large for most provisions. The 
only larger one need be a sack 6 x 10 
inches, of flour, holding about three 
pounds. The 4x6 inch bags hold sugar, 
corn meal, rice, and a mixture of prunes, 
apricots and raisins, (about a pound 
each, these bags weigh). A fourth bag 
of this size will hold small boxes of salt, 
tea, pepper, beef capsules and a cube or 
two of dried soups. Then come the cans. 
They are 3% diameter by 2Vz", friction 
top tins that you have cleaned and saved 
from sundry syrup and lard cans from 
the kitchen. In one of them will be a 
pound of bacon sliced; another, eight 
eggs broken into it; and a third, lard and 
butter. The limit of ten pounds is now 
nearly reached, but there is room for a 
small quarter-pound can of coffee, and a 
can of evaporated milk. With this grub 
list you are fixed for flapjacks, corn 
bread, biscuits, stews, rice, beverages and 
sweets. The bacon fat will all be wanted 
for trout frying, leaving the lard for bis- 
cuits. The eggs are an essential ingredi- 
ent in flapjack batters, corn bread and an 
occasional omelette. 
My cook kit is rather sketchy, but it 
represents the essentials on the least 
weight. I have an aluminum bake pan 
9" x 7" by 1%" deep with cover, for 
biscuits and corn bread; a steel folding 
fry pan, 6" diameter, a mixing pan 4" x 
7" diameter of light tin; a steel folding 
grate; and the cups and long box-like 
container of a certain folding cook kit. 
The grate goes in its own sack to keep 
its soot from soiling things, and the 
baker, ditto, with usually a pound of 
steak inside of it to start off with. I set 
up the wire grate under the fly of my 
little wilderness coop and start a fire, 
with the container upright in its holder 
in the grate at one end, full of fresh 
water and rice or stew. A batter is then 
mixed in the pan, and the latter cleaned 
as soon as its contents are poured into 
the baker and then filled with dried 
fruits mixed, the sugar in the raisins 
being a great saver on the sugar bag. 
This is set on a couple of flat stones 
alongside the grate and some fire coaxed 
under it. The baker then claims my 
whole attention for a while. It is first 
set on the grate, topside up, and the fire 
adjusted to give a hot, flameless heat. 
When a peep under the cover shows that 
the cake or biscuits have risen, it is 
capsized and the other side done the same 
way. It requires about fifteen minutes 
of watching and tending fire to do a per- 
fect cake without scorching. When 
nearly done it is set on edge alongside 
the grate to finish, and the fry pan 
A Westervelt beach tent 
started with three or four pieces of 
bacon. In the grease left after these 
are fished out a trout is fried. Mean- 
while thq rice, or whatever is in the con- 
tainer, has been boiling steadily. By the 
time the fish are done the other is nearly 
ready, and the time left is occupied in 
bringing a large cup of water to boil for 
tea or coffee. The meal is now ready and 
all hot. The cook kit that did it all will 
easily carry strapped atop the pack in a 
light bag of its own. 
Some of my friends have modified this 
outfit by a simple tent fly, sleeping on 
the ground; or by a fly stretched over a 
light net hammock slung between two 
trees, or by a light wedge tent weighing 
some three pounds. I have used, myself, 
a simple fly with walls and front made 
of mosquito gauze in the form of a baker 
tent, weighing 314 lbs. It has the ad- 
vantage of sleeping two, and is quite as 
open to the invigorating night air as the 
other schemes — and that is the principal 
health-giving advantage, something that 
every woodser ought to experience if he 
had never used anything but a closed, 
stuffy tent. 
But, for a go-light camp, we have 
found that the most elastic and satis- 
factory scheme is every man on his own, 
coming in to cook or sleep when he 
pleases, in preference to one man being 
cook, and all sharing the provisions 
among the party. The latter is too hard 
on the cook, and also difficult to meet 
every man’s tastes as to what he prefers 
to eat. 
I N the bass and pike country, one can 
hardly picture such a trip without a 
boat or a canoe being prominent in the 
foreground. This means much easier 
transportation facilities and more weight 
per man allowable. The daily program 
of canoe travel makes eating together a 
time and weight saver, and the same rule 
will generally follow at the permanent 
camp established at the fishing lake. 
Such a party will be of some six or eight 
men, when large aluminum pots, a long 
wire grate, axes for large firewood, and 
a complete table set for all, cuts down the 
work. The various camp tasks are dis- 
tributed or paired off, two men doing the 
cooking, two more attending to firewood 
and water, and two the making of camp, 
pitching tents and the like. We generally 
sleep two to a tent, using the closed type 
such as the “handy” or “snow,” both of 
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